Gary Soto writes that when he was five -what I knew best was at ground level. - In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a ground-level perspective, resreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The -things- of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha -splotched with gold, - the taps of his shoes and the -engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles, - his worn tennies smelling of -summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of basesall. - The child's world is made up of small things--small, very important things.